Changing of the Guard

Thorn shook his head. What would it mean?

  Well, it would mean that if you found one, you found the other.

  And if you got him, you could maybe find out why he had done it, and maybe who had put him up to it. . . .

  A hint of something touched him, as might his opal ring catching a ray of sunlight at just the right angle to gleam with a sudden bright flash of color:

  Maybe there was a way to figure out who the assassin was—by the process of deduction.

  Thorn knew he had to think large, to encompass all the possibilities. First, assume it was just one guy. He was obviously dealing with a professional who wouldn’t leave anything obvious with which to track him. The bug on Jay’s car had been a mistake, maybe, and they had done what they could with that—the records from every traffic cam, bank ATM machine, and Homeland Security invisible in the area of the spy electronic store had been accessed for the day the transmitter had been sold, but all that had given them were thousands of faces. They had run those against the ones in the law-enforcement archives, and the FFR—the Facial Feature Recognition software—had come up with a few bad guys who happened to be passing by, but none they could tie to the assassination attempt on Jay.

  Of course, it could be that the shooter didn’t have a criminal record, any kind of security clearance, a passport, or even a driver’s license, so maybe his picture wasn’t accessible.

  Can’t match what isn’t there.

  What they needed was a cross-reference. If a camera anywhere near the dead Russian agent held an image of somebody who matched one of the faces in the electronics store? Then they’d have something. Neither set of images alone would do it, but together, the chances of a coincidence, of matching faces? That would be unlikely.

  Gridley was awake and Thorn really needed to get by there to see him, but he could get this rolling before he headed for the hospital.

  Thorn put in a call to the Intel Section of Homeland Security and got the woman in charge of the surveillance cams to provide Net Force with the Connecticut records on the day the Russian was killed.

  Then he called the State Police, the Department of Transportation, and the local Sheriff’s office. Finally, he got a street directory of businesses around the location, and sent a blanket e-mail, asking them for their visual records on that date. He didn’t have a court order, but in these days, people felt that helping the government find somebody who was a killer and who might be a terrorist or a spy was worth doing.

  The records would start to come in pretty quick, and the Super-Cray would run the matching software, looking for two identical peas in a very large pod.

  There were a lot of things that could mess it up. Maybe it wasn’t the same guy. Or his image hadn’t been captured on one or both cameras. Or maybe it had been, but the shot was the back of his head or too fuzzy to make a match.

  Those images that did look similar enough would kick out and ask for a human interpretation. All Thorn could do until then was wait. It could take weeks, or even months, and it could always come up empty.

  But at least it was a place to start.

  Now, to go pay a hospital visit. Maybe Jay himself had something to add to this.

  Thorn had only known Jay for a short time before the shooting, but the man sitting in the bed in front of him didn’t seem like the man he remembered.

  He looked the same physically, but the Jay Gridley he’d first met had a brash cockiness that had grated, particularly before he’d walked Jay’s VR stuff and realized Jay really was that good.

  This man seemed a lot less sure of himself.

  “Jay. How are you doing?”

  “Commander. Other than being shot in the head and in a coma? I’m fine.”

  He didn’t sound fine at all.

  Thorn had arranged to have an FBI expert with identikit software come to the hospital—having Jay go into VR this early wasn’t, his doctor said, a good idea.

  Thorn was trying not to be too hopeful, but if he could match the face he’d yanked from the traffic cam in New York with any kind of ID that Gridley could provide, that would be good.

  “Thanks for agreeing to do this so soon—I’m hoping we can get a handle on this guy.”

  “Me, too.”

  The door behind him opened. A thin man with a slightly dreamy expression entered and smiled.

  “Commander. Mr. Gridley. I’m Adrian Heuser, the ID artist.”

  The artist sat down in one of the visitor’s chairs and pulled a rolling tray over so that Gridley could see it. “I understand you had a little trauma after you saw your, ah, shooter?”

  Jay indicated his bandage. “Yeah. You could say that.”

  I guess the lab rats don’t get out much, Thorn thought.

  “Normally we do this in VR, but we’ve got a flatscreen for you.” He put a small flat panel on a stand in front of Jay on the tray, “and one for me.” The second panel must have had a digitizer, because Heuser pulled out a stylus and tapped it several times.

  “As much as you can, I want you to relax, and focus. I want you to go back to just before you were hurt, back to when you were watching. What are you doing?”

  “Sitting in the car wondering why this jerk had cut me off.”

  Heuser took Jay through it, asking questions, getting Jay’s input. The man’s stylus danced over his tablet, tapping out menus and putting down textures and color. He asked what Jay’s attacker was doing, what he was holding, how he stood, how he walked.

  Jay was vague. Understandable, if frustrating.

  A picture began to take shape on the flatscreen, a face with a gun alongside it. But it wasn’t all that clear. It could have been any generic white man, wearing a Band-Aid on his chin and thick glasses.

  Not much help.

  Heuser came at it from different directions; he was very smooth, but it was obvious that Jay had given him all he had. He saved the file and said he’d pipe it over to Thorn.

  “Sorry I didn’t do better,” Jay said.

  “You did fine, Jay. Don’t worry about it.”

  Gridley smiled and nodded. “No problem there,” he said. “I’m awake. Not much to worry about after that.”

  24

  New York City

  Cox had breakfast with the Natural Resources Minister of one of those emerging African states that had gone under three or four different names in the last fifty years. It didn’t much matter what the locals called it, only that they would be willing to deal with his companies for oil reserves they couldn’t really afford to exploit themselves.

  The Minister, a rotund man dressed in nicely cut Armani, had a big smile and a shaved head, and was so dark he seemed almost blue. He was willing to deal. Of course, there would be a kickback, and a little something to grease the wheels beforehand. Nothing really overt needed to be said about this, it was understood. Part of the cost of doing business.

  If they got five years’ worth of oil before some new group came in, slaughtered the current government, and nationalized everything, Cox’s companies would make a healthy profit. And Cox had good instincts when it came to bailing. He could almost smell a coup. If he saw that coming, he would dump the refineries and drilling platforms, sell them to some second-tier petroleum company who thought they could either ride a regime change out or make a deal with the new rulers, and Cox would end up smelling like a rose.

  He had morning meetings with half a dozen movers and shakers from industries associated with his. Among them was a ship-line owner eager to build a new fleet of Panama-canal-sized tankers, those that would draw forty feet or less and be able to reach secondary ports. Cox also saw the head of a drilling firm who was willing to low-bid a new contract and kick back a chunk to Cox besides. And he had a polite meeting with a bearded South American revolutionary who was willing to guarantee mineral rights to Cox when he took over the government—if Cox would front him funds for arms now.

  An ordinary man might be overwhelmed by such constant wheeling and dealing, by the stress of running a mul
tibillion-dollar concern, guiding it through treacherous seas with pirates in all directions. Not Cox. This was why he had been born. He had the power of a country’s president, but a lot more money to go with it.

  Better the ruler than the ruled. Always.

  His private line cheeped. Ah. That would be Eduard!

  Southeast of Bridgeport, Connecticut

  It had gone well, Natadze thought, as well as could be hoped for. The Russian had given up everything he knew about Cox, Natadze was sure of that, he had held nothing back. He had not been a particularly brave man, the Russian. His lean and idealistic days were long behind him; he had grown soft living in the U.S., had allowed the luxuries and easy life here to let him think he was in no danger. He had lowered his guard.

  A fatal mistake.

  The Russian had rolled over quickly, and what had to be done to make sure he was telling the truth had been done. Nothing that would show on an autopsy, of course, but effective. Very.

  Natadze was not a great fan of torture. He took no thrill from using it. When it was necessary, he applied it, but it was a tool, nothing more. He hadn’t needed to apply it. The threat had been enough. The Russian had known who he was, and of what he was capable. Eduard was as certain of the information the dead man had given him as he could be.

  There were only four places, according to the Russian, where the intelligence regarding Samuel Walker Cox still existed: First was the old Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravlenie—the GRU—and that piece was at the former HQ building at the Khodinka Airfield, near Moscow. They still called it “The Aquarium,” and Natadze knew it well enough. You could take the purple metro line to Polezhaevskaya Station, big as you please, and stroll a short ways to the place. Getting into such a building even now would be difficult, but that wasn’t necessary. They were all still broke in Moscow, despite the newest reforms, and if you had enough money, you could buy just about anything you wished.

  Natadze knew hungry people in the GRU who would be more than happy to do him a favor for a suitcase full of rubles, much less American dollars. A computer crash, a small fire, and those files would be gone. And his contacts knew that to try and hold out on him for blackmail later would be a bad idea.

  The second place was with the Turks, who certainly had kept a copy of the encrypted material that had begun this whole affair. There were poor file clerks in Turkey as well, and Natadze knew somebody who knew somebody who could pave a road to a clerk’s door with enough money to buy those files.

  The third had been the Russian himself, and he wasn’t going to be telling anybody anything unless he believed in an afterlife, and that would be the Devil who processed him into Hell. Should be there by now. If such a place existed, no doubt the doctor would wish to discuss it with Natadze when he eventually arrived there.

  He smiled. He did not believe in Hell, nor in Heaven. God, if He existed, should be too busy to concern Himself with what people did on this one little mudball of a planet.

  The fourth, and most problematic, was the file at Net Force HQ in Quantico. Americans could be bribed, of course, but not all of them were corrupt—and if you chose the wrong one to try, the whistle would be blown, fast and loud. An organization such as Net Force would be full of patriots, and men who valued their country more than they did personal fortunes were very dangerous. As far as he knew, Net Force still did not understand the significance of the Turkish files, and Natadze did not wish to alert them to this.

  So that would be the biggest challenge. He would have to figure out a way to get to the files and destroy them. Fortunately, the man he had put into the hospital was in no position to work on them, at least for a while. He could start the ball rolling on the GRU and Turks with a couple of calls. Money was no object to Mr. Cox—an amount that would make a man rich in Moscow or Ankara was pocket change to a man worth billions.

  Natadze felt good about things, better than he had since the snafu with Gridley. He was on top of the situation, he had been very careful with the Russian, the death would look like an accident, and in any event, he’d left nothing behind to follow him. Mr. Cox would be pleased with him. Thinking of which, he picked up the throw-away cell phone and pressed in Cox’s number.

  “You have good news?”

  “Yes. It is done,” he said. “No problems.”

  “Excellent. I’ll see you soon.”

  “Yes.”

  Natadze discommed. He would destroy the phone at the first stop for petrol, and would scatter the pieces into several garbage cans at different locations. No more mistakes.

  Washington, D.C.

  Jay asked the doctor point-blank: “If you were me, would you stay here?”

  Dr. Grayson smiled. “If I were you, I’d probably be in a circus sideshow, me being a woman and all.”

  “Funny,” he said, not answering her smile. “And not a bad sidestep of the question, either.”

  She sighed. “You were in a deep coma, Mr. Gridley,” she said. “After having a bullet thwack you in the head. Another day or two in the hospital is a smart idea in the long run.”

  “In the long run, Doc, we’re all dead. And you’re still dancing.”

  She shook her head. “If I were you and I knew what I knew, I’d stay here for another day. People are both very tough and very fragile, and we don’t begin to know all there is to know about this kind of injury.”

  “But I’m not in a coma now, my head wound is not serious, I’ve got a bandage on it and all, and I can lie around in my own bed a lot cheaper than I can this one.”

  “Why don’t we wait for your wife to come back from lunch and discuss it?”

  “Oh, no, then it would be two against one. I want to go home.”

  “What’s so important there it can’t wait?”

  “The guy who put me here is still out there. I can help track him down. Wouldn’t you be perturbed if somebody had shot you?”

  “If I agreed to let you go home and you had a relapse, my malpractice insurance company would never forgive me.”

  “I won’t sue you.”

  “That’s what they all say.”

  “Come on, Doctor. I need to be out of here.”

  She nodded. “It’s not a prison, Mr. Gridley. You can check out AMA if you wish.”

  “AMA?”

  “Against Medical Advice. You sign a waiver, then if you drop dead on the way home, you can’t blame us—though the families usually do anyway.”

  “Where do I sign?”

  She smiled again, and shook her head. “That’s what your wife said you would say.”

  “Saji talked to you?”

  “On the way to lunch. She said you would tell me you were checking out of the hospital, and no matter what I said, you wouldn’t be swayed. She said she would keep a careful eye on you.”

  Jay frowned. “How could she know this? I didn’t discuss this with her.”

  “Apparently she knows you better than you think.”

  He sighed. Yeah. Apparently so.

  But that didn’t matter. He was going home.

  25

  Net Force HQ

  Quantico, Virginia

  Even though he knew it was theoretically possible, Thorn hadn’t really believed he’d be that lucky. Now and again, it happened, just often enough to keep him from discounting it.

  The Super-Cray had come up with a match on Jay’s shooter and whoever killed the dead Russian.

  Alone in his office, Thorn had his holoproj float the two images side-by-side. The picture on the left was from a bank ATM cam near the spy goods store—the man hadn’t been using the machine, but had been walking past it in the background, behind a woman withdrawing money from her account. Forty dollars, according to the ATM’s records. It was not the sharpest picture in the world, and only caught him from about the knees up, but it showed a dark-haired man of perhaps thirty-five glancing in the camera’s direction. A scale running down the size of the image showed his height in centimeters, based on the known height of a NO P
ARKING sign on a post behind him. He was about six feet tall.

  The woman, a young and attractive brunette who was visible only from the chest up and blocking most of the frame, wore a skimpy red halter top that had trouble keeping her rather voluptuous breasts in check, and if the rear view was as interesting as the front one, Thorn guessed that this was the reason the passing man was looking over his right shoulder her way. He was checking her out.

  That would mean he was heterosexual.

  Or maybe he was gay, she had on designer pants, and he was admiring those.

  Or maybe she had a puppy standing next to her and he was a dog breeder . . . ?

  Leave that for now.

  The second image was taken by a traffic cam covering an intersection in southern Connecticut, the town of Bridgeport, four miles away from where the Russian spy’s body had been found. A car was halfway through the intersection, making a clear right-hand turn on a red light, right next to a NO TURN ON RED sign. The traffic cam had snapped an image, showing the driver and the front of the car with its license plate, all neat for the local authorities to run the plate and mail the driver a ticket. The picture was date and time stamped.

  The driver was an elderly woman, white-haired, and barely able to see over the top of the full-sized Cadillac’s steering wheel.

  But: Behind that car, stopped behind the crosswalk, was a new Dodge, and seated at the wheel of that car was a dark-haired man whose head was surrounded by a pulsing red circle.

  “Enlarge two hundred percent. Unsharp mask, selected field, on image two,” Thorn said. “Apply reasonable extrapolation generator.”

  The computer obeyed, doubling the size of the image inside the circle, sharpening it, and augmenting the colors and shapes rendered based on a specialized enhancement program, the REG.

  It looked like the same man to Thorn, but the big thing was that the Cray thought so, too. It had a much higher accuracy rating than Thorn’s eyes.